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How to Save a Life
By Stardust! Don't touch or Cenote will come after you >:( Author's Notes I'll be writing a note up here every time I either post a new chapter or have news. 6/9: Prologue has been posted! I'm considering making a thread for this so people can enter their OCs to be featured. Should I do it? Yes, definitely! Sure! Okay. I dunno, whatever you want. Please don't 6/10: The thread has been created! Hop on over and submit your characters! Please note that A) they may not be accepted, and B) they will receive only minor roles. Prologue A/N: Prologue! Word count: 2,387 Pages in Google Docs: 8 “Come on, hurry!” Reed whisper-yelps from next to me as we weave through the streets of Silt. Reed’s my brother, my only older sibling. He’s the bigwings of our sib group, and he takes care of all of us, and sometimes he gets a little bossy, but then we tell him to stop, and then we’re all happy again. I skid past an alley, not stopping until a hissed “Psst!” comes from beside me and Reed. As I look closer, I can see the dark eyes of Marsh and Sora peering out from behind some barrels. “She’s going to get you if you don’t find somewhere to hide soon!” Marsh says under his breath. Sora whacks him with her wing - quietly, though. “They still have a few more minutes.” I flash Sora a thumbs-up and take off again. If you’re wondering, Marsh is the third-oldest of our sibs. He’s really nervous and fidgety a lot of the time, and probably the most paranoid out of the six of us. Luckily, Sora’s there to balance him out. She’s quiet too, but brave and really clever. Reed and I keep flitting about, meticulously peeking into every nook and cranny to find a place to secret ourselves away. To my surprise, it’s pretty tiring. “Where… should we hide…?” Reed pants. I slow my pace, stopping next to a building and flopping against it in exhaustion. “How about… inside the… general store?” Silt’s general store is a small wooden building near the west edge of town. It’s run by a really nice, really old dragon named Quake, and I just know he’ll let us hide in there. But sometimes he says the weirdest things. Like last month, he said that “this ol’ store’s going bankrupt, and the whole town too!” I don’t even know what bankrupt means! Anyway, I haven’t been there for a few weeks, and I kind of want to see Quake again. Maybe he’ll give me some free food. Bringing me back to the present, Reed nods enthusiastically, or as enthusiastic as he can be still looking like he wants to sleep for a hundred years. “Sure, let’s go!” I gesture him forward, but he gives me his trademark crooked smile that all the girls seem to fall for. “You lead,” he says. Without hesitating, I take off, weaving between the crooked buildings like I’ve been doing it all my life - which I have. Although Silt might be small (I can run through the whole city in a few hours), and filthy (eew, what’s that in that trash can over there?), and run-down (the school still hasn’t been rebuilt), it’s all I know. I was hatched and raised here, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. (Granted, ‘raised’ is an interesting word for it.) I trace my way through the labyrinthine streets of Silt, painfully aware of every second. She must be coming for us right now. The thought chases itself around my head, but no - I can’t think of that. I know that there are a lot of other hiding places around here, but for some reason I have my mind set on finding Quake. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Umber tucked away in an alley. He raises his tail to us in greeting, but doesn’t move toward us. Classic Umber. He’s the youngest of us, but he’s super loyal and brave and is kinda like the glue of the family, keeping us all together. I wave back to him and continue on my way, but Reed tugs on my wing. “This is just as good as a hiding spot as Quake’s store. Why not just stay with Umber? My feet hurt and I don’t wanna walk anymore.” His unspoken words hang in the air: And I don’t think it’s safe. “You can stay here, I’ll go alone,” I answer, and race away before he can protest. Poor Reed, obsessively trying to take care of us all when sometimes we just want some independence. I think he doesn’t think he’s a very good big brother. We all love and respect him, but he doesn’t respect himself. After about another minute of walking, I stop at the front door of a boxy wooden building and peer inside. It’s the store we all know and love, but somehow… not. It takes a few more cursory glances to figure it out: the windows are shuttered. Quake’s windows are never shuttered. I creak the door open and bound inside, ducking behind a shelf that’s supposed to be carrying canned fruit. Key word, supposed: today, there’s nothing on it. But again, something else feels off: the store seems dusty, like it hasn’t seen life for a long time. And nobody’s in there - during my last visit, there were less dragons there, but that might just be because Quake’s getting old and kind of absent-minded these days. I think he forgot something really important a while ago, because he was muttering about some things called “paying bills” and “losing money.” Like I said before, Quake says some weird stuff. Pheasant’s excited shriek sounds in the distance: “Ready or not, here I come!” She was the one to get us all into this hide-and-seek thing, and she’s the second youngest of our little family. Pheasant’s really fiery and passionate about everything she does, but sometimes she gets into trouble too easily. She’s our fighter, and we all know she’ll defend us to the end. Reed, Marsh, Sora, Pheasant, Umber. And then there’s me. Compassionate, caring, veryvery stubborn. Sora calls me ‘hot-headed.’ (She loves big words.) When I grow up, I want to be a soldier. I want to help our tribe win. I want to end this war. It’s my ‘big dream,’ Sora also calls it. I duck into the storeroom, calling, “Quake? Are you in here? It’s me!” Surprisingly, even the storeroom is empty, and Quake isn’t in here either. Where could he be? Like gunshots, four loud bangs shatter the silence. I jump in surprise, trip over a burlap sack, and my head is smashed against the sharp corner of a shelf. And that’s when it happens. Pain explodes through not just my skull, but my entire body. White starbursts dance through my vision, filling my world with blinding shards of agony. I can’t take it, the stabbing bursts that are tearing me apart. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move, taken over by the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, as my vision goes fuzzy at the edges and spreads to the center. The darkness opens its wings, and I walk into it. * * * * * * I open my eyes blearily, and a bright light immediately obscures my sight. “Am I dead?” I ask muzzily. My tongue feels like a piece of parchment that was scorched in a fire; even speaking hurts. Then it all comes back to me: the sounds, the fall. The pain. And the quiet. It still aches really bad when I try to move, so I just lay there for a little bit. After a few minutes, I get to my feet and stumble woozily out of the room, flopping on the wall every few steps. Next to the door that leads to the outside, I spot a paper taped up. My head is still swimming, but I can decipher the word stamped in red ink on it: Eviction. What in the world does that mean? I decide to ignore it. It probably doesn’t mean anything. It takes a few more minutes, but I manage to regain my bearings. Finally, I feel like I can move uninterrupted again, and I take a few experimental bounds across the small room. Suddenly, the door bangs open, and Pheasant bursts in gleefully. “Found you!” She flings herself onto me, and we wrestle in a ball for a moment. I have to pull away because I’m still dizzy, but she doesn’t seem to notice, chattering on in that high-pitched voice of hers. “You know, I found you last, right? You’re really good at hiding! Marsh screamed when he saw me again, he’s a funny guy. Then Umber tried to run away, but he tripped on a rock and I tagged him out. Sora aaaaaalmost escaped, but then I cornered her in an alley and she gave up. Hey, are you okay? You look dizzy-” “I’m fine,” I interrupt, waving her off. Sure, I’m a little dizzy, and I’m starting to feel nauseous, and I kind of feel like going to sleep for a century, but that won’t stop me from playing hide-and-seek! Pheasant tugs me outside, both of us blinking in the sunlight. Reed, Marsh, Sora, and Umber are all there, piling onto one other and grappling like they’ll never stop. Even Marsh is participating, instead of sitting on the sidelines and nervously twitching like he usually is. “Race you all around the block!” Umber calls, and everybody takes off, screaming like banshees. I chase after them, slower than usual but determined not to show it. As I keep running, veering around corners and dodging random piles of trash, something really weird starts happening to my eyesight. Scratch that - to everything. Everything’s blurry; my siblings are just brown blobs and the few trees scattered around the street look like yellow-green cones. My feet are numb and I can’t feel them moving anymore, and everything seems really distant, like I’m not in my own body anymore. The sounds of my siblings’ whoops and cries seem to echo inside my head, and everything seems like it’s underwater. The world slows down. It’s just me, I think hazily. Just me and… and… I can’t even think right anymore! As I pass the “finish line” (just a piece of string stretched across the dirt), I collapse to the ground, panting. Dimly, warning flags go up in the back of my brain: Something’s wrong with you. But I can’t form proper thoughts, can’t use my mouth right. The indistinct shapes of Reed and Umber hover over me, but I can’t get up. Their concerned voices float to me through air that feels like syrup: What’s wrong with her? Why is she shaking? It’s true, I am shaking. I can’t stop! Now I’m jerking like one of the insane dragons I saw in the town asylum, with wild abandon. I accidentally whack Sora with my wing, and she jumps back in fright, but I just can’t get my mouth to form the word sorry. I can feel myself being lifted up, through a daze of white and wonder, but it still feels like I’m floating away. Up, up, and away! a ridiculous thought drifts through my head. Ah, now something’s finally in focus. Sora’s leaning over me, her face a mask of terror. What’s happening to you? she asks, but not with her mouth, with her eyes. I laugh hysterically, a bubble of insanity escaping my throat as we bump along the dirt road. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” And for the second time that day, I’m enveloped in darkness’s waiting arms. * * * * * * Bright lights. A metal table. Floating away. I scrabble desperately to hold on to my last thread of consciousness, but I fail, and I’m gone again. * * * * * * “Is she awake?” “She isn’t dead, is she?” “She’s gotta be okay. She’s gotta be.” And then, a jumble of voices all talking at once: “You’re awake!” “You’re not dead!” “Oh, I just knew you were okay?” My eyes open a slit and I push myself up, but it’s too hard. I’m too tired again, and I fall back onto… a pillow? Where am I? A doe-eyed MudWing, probably the doctor, shoos my siblings away (my siblings!) and checks my heart rate anxiously. “You had a seizure, honey.” I have so many questions. So. Many. But the first and only thing that comes out of my mouth is, “Wha?” She gently feels my scales, and I try not to wince. “We ran some scans, and your head lit up. Looks like you hit your head earlier, and that triggered something called epilepsy.” Sora turned white, but she was the only one who reacted. Reed cocked his head. “What’s that?” The nurse launched into a long-winded explanation, and Reed just sat there and nodded from time to time, trying his best to act like an adult. But he wasn’t. We all knew he didn’t understand a word, and Sora was slowly turning paler by the second. A few parts jumped out at me: Seizure. Losing control. Passing out. Then a pause in the conversation, finally. “How do we fix it?” Reed asked quietly. The nurse looked down for a long time. And even more quietly, she answered, “We can’t.” My dizziness had been gone, but now it was back full-blast, and I felt like passing out again. I crumpled back onto the bed, faintly aware of the nurse shoving everyone out the door. Then she was back, her kind face taking up my swimming vision. She sits down next to my bed and wraps her wings around me. I’ve never had a mother, but the gesture feels so comforting that a tear leaks out of my eye. I swipe it away quickly, and the nurse pretends not to notice. I can now make out that her name-tag reads Fawn. That’s a pretty name. We’re quiet, but just being there is enough. Then the nurse breaks the silence, and I’m kind of disappointed because one of the birds outside was singing a really cool song. “Now, when you have a-” She stumbles on the word seizure. “an episode, I want you to think about the simplest facts about yourself, yet make up your whole being.” I cock my head, not sure what she means. “Like, I have brown scales?” Fawn shakes her head no, getting off the bed and flurrying through her things. “I have to go, but I know you’ll get it! I’ll be back in a few minutes!” And bam, she’s gone. Out the door. I curl up under the blankets, my head pounding. But then I remember what Fawn taught me, and I have a flash of understanding. When I grow up, I want to be a soldier. I have six siblings. I live in Silt. And then out loud, I say, “My name is Crane.” Polls What did you think? Amazing!!! Pretty good! Decent. Eh... It was kinda bad. I hated it! Who do you ship? to be seen >:) Why are you still here? Get out! Come back later! Category:Fanfictions Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete) Category:Content (Stardust the IceWing-RainWing) Category:Fanfictions (Canon)